Two different facades sit side by side at 22-26 Market Square, the New Hampshire Bank Building in Portsmouth. Built in 1803 and much altered since, this is one of the nation’s oldest purpose-built bank buildings and, until 1977, it was the oldest building used continuously to house banking operations. It was honored with listing on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
Look closely and you’ll see why its story reads on the outside: sited prominently on the east side of Market Square, one building south of Daniel Street, it now shows two different facades side by side because of its long history of change. Originally a two-story brick structure with a five-bay front—its center three bays recessed and sheltered by a roof that protected the entrances in the projecting outer bays—the ground floor was partitioned in 1869 into two street-facing entrances with a third center door up to the upper floor. In 1903 the building was widened and its left side was restyled in the Classical Revival; the right side was renovated in 1904.
Those two adjoining faces, one restyled in 1903 and the other renovated in 1904, still front the east side of Market Square.